We all wear clothes everyday but how often do we take the time to think about where they come from and who made them? Have a look at the label of your shirt. It will tell you in which country the people who stitched it together live and it will tell you what material it has been made of, such as cotton or polyester. But it won’t tell you where in the world the cotton was farmed, where the fibre was spun into yarn, woven into fabric, dyed and printed.
"Cheap, fast fashion has changed the way we shop. However, in recent years that has been a growing awareness of both the human rights and environmental issues which lie at the heart of this."
Crucially, it won’t tell the story of the people involved and the environmental impacts of its production. More than likely it is not a good story. Probably it is a story that the company who sold you the shirt doesn’t want you to hear.
Cheap, fast fashion has changed the way we shop. However, in recent years that has been a growing awareness of both the human rights and environmental issues which lie at the heart of this fast, cheap fashion industry. It is an issue we are all implicated in and one we should all know more about.
Water footprint
The water footprint of our clothes is huge and surprising. It has been estimated that 2720 litres of water are required to produce a single t-shirt. That would provide a person with 3 years’ worth of ‘drinking water. In Stacey Dooley’s recent documentary Fashion’s Dirty Secrets, she travels to the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. Once one of the world’s largest inland seas, it has now been largely reduced to a desert due to water being diverted and used for cotton production. How big is the water footprint of the clothes in your wardrobe? Use this water footprint calculator to find out.
"Despite there being international standards and national laws which should protect people, human rights abuses are prevalent throughout the fashion industry."
Pesticides, dyes and pollution
Growing the fibres for clothes, processing, dyeing and treating garments requires a cocktail of chemicals, some of them toxic. Cotton farming uses 22.5% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of all pesticides.
Dyes for textile products may contain hazardous chemicals. Dyes and chemicals in fabric and toxic pesticides can all seep into the soil contaminating groundwater. Local people often rely on these polluted water ways for their own water usage.
Waste
In the last 15 years clothing production has doubled. In the same time, the number of times a garment is worn has decreased by more than a third. Around 300,000 tons of used clothes go to landfill in the UK every year. Once in landfill, the decomposing cloth releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. It can take up to 5 years for a wool jumper to decompose in landfill.
Human side of fashion
Millions of people work in the fashion industry. However, the majority of these people who make clothes for a global market live in poverty, unable to pay of life’s basic necessities. 80% of them are young women. Low wages keep garment workers in a cycle of poverty and add to the pressure to work long overtime hours, which impacts on their health and safety.
Despite there being international standards and national laws which should protect people, human rights abuses are prevalent throughout the fashion industry. Forced labour, child labour, harassment and poor working conditions are all common.
Things we need to change
Both people and the planet currently suffer as a result of the way fashion is made, sourced and consumed. This needs to change. Fashion Revolution, a global movement campaigning to improve the fashion industry, suggest the following 3 things need to change: the model, the materials and the mindset.
Model – Fashion is one of the most globalised industries. Despite raising costs, fashion is getting cheaper and someone somewhere is paying the price. We need to rethink how we produce and consume fashion.
Material – Fashion has a huge, negative, social and environmental impacts. The production of our clothes and how we take care of them is unsustainable. This needs to change.
Mindset – We buy more clothes than in the past and spend less on them. We need to change the way we think about what we wear and why we wear it.
"We need to rethink how we produce and consume fashion."
Things we can do
- Buy less – reconsider what we need rather than what we want.
- Buy better – buy from an environmentally sustainable brands where possible
- Buy second hand – buy from charity shops and online
- Swap – hold a clothes swapping party with friends
- Think before you throw – can you repair it, donate it or recycle
- Make your voice heard – write to policy makers, politicians, and big brands and tell them what you want to change in the fashion industry
- Join a campaign – get involved in an existing campaign like the Fashion Revolution
A word of caution. Unwanted second hand clothes are becoming a problem for some countries in the Global South. According to Oxfam more than 70% of clothes donated globally end up in Africa, where it has destroyed the economy for local tailors.
Into the classroom
Fashion and textiles is a topic which children and young people of all ages can engage with and explore the global connections they have to people and places all over the world. It is a topic which covers a variety of Global Citizenship themes from environmental sustainability to human rights and gender equality. There are some useful resources to explore the clothing industry on Signposts.
So next time you buy a piece of clothing – stop and think. Do I really need this? What can I find out about how it was made? Could I buy it second hand? Is there an ethically, sustainably made alternative? Change is in our hands.
